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Every year, in the month of February, the recreation of the Wedding of Isabel de Segura is celebrated in the city of Teruel, Spain, known as the Medieval Festival of the Lovers of Teruel, a history and legend that is still very much alive and has enormous popular roots, which represents a great dissemination of the cultural, artistic and historical heritage of Teruel and a first-rate claim in national and international tourism. Teruel becomes an authentic medieval site worth visiting. To check the current offer, you can browse the collection of clothes.
The Medieval Festival of the Lovers of Teruel It coincides with the celebration of Valentine's Day. Throughout the weekend They represent medieval stories and legends in the streets and squares and many Teruel residents and people from all over participate in it, dressing in clothing very faithful to medieval times and the city acquires an atmosphere typical of those times. To check the current offer, you can browse the collection of clothing accessories.
Isabel de Segura and Juan Martínez de Marcilla, better known for the recreations of the baroque theater as Diego de Marcilla, is a beautiful story and legend of love and pain, known as “The Lovers of Teruel”, two young people from Teruel at the dawn of the 13th century. Diego and Isabel lived in Teruel and fell in love against family wishes. Isabel de Segura's family had power and a lot of wealth, while the Martínez de Marcilla family was a family with very few economic resources. To check the current offer, you can browse the collection of costume jewelry.
The lovers asked for permission to marry and Isabel's father rejected Diego because he was not the ideal suitor for his daughter and because he had no assets or wealth. Then Diego (or Juan Martínez de Marcilla) swore to make his fortune outside Teruel and return after five years and asked Isabel's father not to marry her to any other man in the meantime. But Isabel's father forced her to marry the aristocrat Pedro de Azagra, brother of the Lord of Albarracín, because according to him he was the ideal husband for his daughter. The betrothal of the young Isabel with this nobleman was very famous and celebrated in Teruel, with great wedding bells.
When the five years of the promise were completed in 1217, Diego returned, already very rich and famous after taking part in multiple battles. Upon arriving and seeing the festive and decorated atmosphere of the town, he is informed that Isabel de Segura has just gotten married. Seeing that his beloved Isabel was already married to another man, he asked to see her and at the moment they were facing each other, Diego asked Isabel for a kiss, she denied him because she already belonged to another man and he suffered so much that at that moment he fell collapsed on the floor, dying instantly.
The next day, the wedding bells have changed their tolling for funeral ones. A sad and silent procession transports the corpse of the unfortunate lover, depositing it in the temple. When the funeral is about to begin, a woman with a veiled face emerges from the crowd and approaches the deceased: it is Isabel de Segura attending the funeral of her eternal beloved Diego. And the people of Teruel watched astonished as the young Isabel de Segura passionately kissed her lover on his already cold and lifeless lips, suddenly falling dead on Diego's body, when she "gave him in death the kiss that she had denied him in life."
Their love was so great that they both died of pain due to their frustrated love, which is why they were buried together and have remained that way until today. Their story is known as that of “The Lovers of Teruel”. Their bodies were found together between 1553 and 1555 in the Church of San Pedro in the city of Teruel, inside the chapel of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The notary Yagüe de Salas documented this discovery and also searched among the old documents in which it is said that at that time, they were buried together. They were unearthed again on April 13, 1619. In 1950 their bodies were again unearthed and placed in a white alabaster tomb in which the faces of the lovers appear and they lie joined by hands, but without touching each other. The alabaster and bronze mausoleum in which the remains of Diego de Marcilla and Isabel de Segura currently rest, whose hands do not touch each other in symbol of an unfulfilled love, was sculpted by Juan de Ávalos and is continually visited by countless visitors from all over the world.
In September 2005, the new Mausoleum of the Lovers of Teruel was inaugurated. The building, designed by architect Alejandro Cañada, consists of three floors and a total exhibition area of 350 square meters. Upon accessing it, the visitor is transported to the 13th century and gets to know the true story of the Lovers. Furthermore, Juan de Ávalos' sculptural ensemble can be, for the first time, admired from an appropriate perspective. Finally, after a long pilgrimage, the famous lovers rest in this new museum and interpretation space attached to the Church of San Pedro in which the social and cultural context of this story is analyzed.
The legend of “The Lovers of Teruel” has been rewritten more than 20 times by pens as prestigious as that of Tirso de Molina, who have taken it to poetry, novels and theater. The maestro Tomás Bretón, inspired by Harzenbush's work, elevated it to the dignity of opera. With a libretto by Tomás Bretón himself and divided into five acts, it premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid on February 12, 1889. It was adapted to the theater by Rey de Artieda (1584), converted into a poem by Jerónimo de Huerta (1588) and a tragic epic by Juan Yagüe de Salas (1616), and inspired the work of the same name by Juan Pérez de Montalbán (1638). The most famous version is the historical drama by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, written in 1836 and premiered in 1837.
HYMN TO THE LOVERS OF TERUEL
Hands that do not touch, deep serenity with which one day death sealed your face. Sleep, sleep, Lovers: your body circles the Teruel land that gave you life and death. Dream of your hope, and of immolated love, on an altar of glory with fire of pain. Sleep, sleep, Lovers, because a people in love will make a flower always sprout in your grave... A flower will always sprout... From a throne of stars that welcomes you in the sky, you contemplate the respect with which Teruel looks at you. You are a perennial example, hope and consolation because there will always be a Diego if there is an Isabel. In the white tomb that Teruel has carved with a stone of illusions and with a chisel of love, sleep, sleep, Lovers, for a people in love will make a flower always sprout in your tomb... A flower will always sprout...
